Science and Magic in Ge Hong’s ‘Baopu-Zi Nei Pian’
Excerpts from Science and Magic in Ge Hong’s ‘Baopu-Zi Nei Pian’
by Evgueni A. Tortchinov
St. Petersburg State University, Russia)
Firstly, Ge Hong rejects the opinion that only herbal drugs are beneficial for health as well as for the prolongation of life.
He states that drugs made from minerals and metallic substances are much more useful than the herbal ones. The herbal drugs are weak and the strong heat destroys them but minerals and metals are strong and stable: for example, the heat can not destroy cinnabar which changes itself into the “water silver”, or mercury. After this statement, Ge Hong notes that ordinary people do not know even such simple things as the origin of the cinnabar (HgS) in the mercury. They say that cinnabar is red and the mercury is white and so, it is impossible that the white substance produces the red one.
The second aspect of this passage is more interesting. Ge Hong declares that the common people (“worldly people”, or shi ren ) are ignorant even of such things as the nature of the cinnabar and so, it is not surprising that they do not believe in such subtle things as the way of immortality.
Ge Hong describes the healing qualities of different plants and herbs, but, as he states, the common people do not want to use them and prefer the superstitious religious methods of healing (such as prayers, sacrifices, fortune-telling, etc.). They do not believe in the art of the famous physicians but rely on shamans and sorcerers. And if it is so, it is very naturally that they do not believe that because of the eating of the Golden and Cinnabar Elixirs immortality can be obtained. Moreover, they reject even the usefulness of mushrooms and flowers for the prolongation of life. How can we hope that they will recognize the truthfulness of the way of immortals?
It is significant that Ge Hong treats the Daoist alchemy with its super mundane aims in the same terms as the traditional medicine and pharmacology. Thus, alchemy and the “arts of immortals” for Ge Hong are not of supernatural, or religious nature; they are “positive” and “scientific” in the same way as medicine and pharmacology are. The rejection of these arts certifies the ignorance of the common people preferring the “superstitious” religious ways to the means of medicine and the Daoist arts which have the same character as medicine. And this character is quite opposed to the superstitious nature of purely religious practices.
Ge Hong not only demonstrates the contrast between the “scientific” knowledge of the sages and the ignorance of the ordinary people but uses the “positive”, or “experimental” contents of the Daoist texts for support of his Daoist approaches. Ge Hong’s beliefs in immortality and alchemy obtain their “scientific” ground in the empirical and positive sides of the Daoist classics (jing) becoming the proven results of the real verified knowledge. Thus, knowledge and experience (not faith, or intuition) were the basis of Ge Hong’s beliefs in the immortals and in the Daoist methods of the attainment of their exalted state.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that BPZNP is full of the information about magical and supernatural events which are for the external observer quite identical with the contents of the beliefs of the Ge Hong’s opponents. But for Ge Hong himself they are very different: for him the Daoist beliefs, the ardent proponent of which he was, had a scientific and positive nature based on the experimental data and positive knowledge of the sages (being of the same kind as the data of medicine, etc.), and the beliefs of his opponents were devoid of such basis, being superstitious and ignorant. It is possible to note that there were two kinds of Ge Hong’s opponents and interlocutors: the representatives of the so called Confucian rationalism and the “superstitious” followers of the folk religious cults.
It is substantial for Ge Hong to have authoritative sources of information recognized by the Daoist tradition (the knowledge of the lineage of the holders of the text is also important). Such sources are called by Ge Hong “The Classics of Immortals” (xian jing). Not only the origin in the Daoist classics was the testimony of the validity of the information about the immortals and immortality for Ge Hong. He also evaluated greatly the witnesses of the Chinese authoritative texts of the Confucian and historiographical tradition.
It can be said that Ge Hong recognizes the following criteria of the validity of the beliefs and different kinds of opinions related to the subjects of science and religion: 1. The experience; 2. The testimonies of the Daoist Classics and of the well known and highly estimated by the Chinese tradition non-Daoist texts. The practices and beliefs which had no such scriptural support (as in the case of the folk beliefs and cults) were rejected by Ge Hong as superstitious and excessive. Thus, Ge Hong tries to represent his techniques of immortality and his alchemical and occult ideas as an integral part of the “great tradition” of the Chinese culture. For him they are not only equal to the ideas of the Confucian sages but even higher and more exalted than the Confucian doctrines (according to Ge Hong’s position Confucianism is the branch and Daoism is its root).
It is rather clear that Ge Hong greatly evaluates experience and laboratory alchemical operations. But these operations as such have direct relations to magic and ritual behaviour. It is impossible to divide technical, magical and ritualistic aspects of the scientific approaches of Ge Hong. He denies the idea of the automatic, or mechanical effect of the elixirs, combining the technical and chemical procedures with fasting, prayers and purification.
Thus, it can be said that practical character of Ge Hong’s alchemy does not prevent him from the declaration of highly ritualized nature of the alchemical doings. Therefore, it bears remarkable (to the mind of a contemporary Westerner, of course) contradiction between science and magic. And this magic permeates the very core of Ge Hong’s understanding of alchemy and medicine. But this magic is of quite another nature than the superstitious beliefs of the common people: it has its roots in the Daoist stratum of the great tradition of the Chinese culture being to Ge Hong’s mind supported by the experience of the sages of old who transmitted their knowledge and methods to the contemporary Daoists throw the unbreakable lineage from one mater to another.
Moreover, this experience of the ancient sages must not be only a subject of the so called “blind faith”: it can be verified by the alchemist throw his own laboratory doings. Ge Hong does not admire the antiquity as such. Like ancient Legalists and his predecessor in the field of skepticism and empiricism Wang Chong, Ge Hong looks at the antiquity like on the trace of a giant: the giant has gone away and his trace is not he himself. Therefore, the ancient witnesses for Ge Hong have their value only within the frame of the Daoist experimental approach. If Ge Hong was only a mystic it could be waited for his interest in the intuitive insights into the hidden nature of the reality underlying the transitory phenomena. But we can not find such an interest. The passages dedicated to the meditative practices for metaphysical understanding are very rare in BPZNP. The only exception is the beginning of the 18th chapter of this work (Di zhen) dedicated to the contemplation of the True One (zhen yi) which is the manifestation of the Mysterious Dao (xuan) in the things and in the physiological structures of the Daoist “subtle body” (“the fields of cinnabar”, dantian). But even this passage relates mostly to the practices of the “preservation of the One” (shou yi) and not to the insight type meditations. The aids of these kind of contemplation are protection from the enemies and illness, the obtaining of super powers throw multiplication of the body, etc.
The practical sides of Daoism (the preparation of the great elixir of immortality and supporting methods) and corresponding to them the doctrines of the immortals - xian are the principle subjects of Ge Hong’s interests which directly correlate to his scientific and experiential approaches. To my mind, Ge Hong was not a mystic or a seeker of intuitive insights but an investigator, researcher of nature with pragmatic attitude (the obtaining of physical immortality), and experimental and skeptical thinker. The abundance of magic in his writings was a result of an essential character of the traditional science which included in itself magic and magical attitudes (e.g. the idea of the universal sympathies, Chinese “tong lei”) not only in China but throughout the world until the time of Newton, Galileo Galilei and Descartes.
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It seems that most of the posters on this thread have no personal knowledge of Taoist Alchemy, no personal experience with Taoist Alchemy practices, or simply no personal interest in the subject matter, and thus have nothing to contribute to a discussion of the topic.